EPA Announces Agricultural Pesticide Spray Drift Reduction Technologies Voluntary Program

On October 15, 2014, the Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) announced a voluntary program to document the effectiveness of agricultural pesticide spray application technologies on reducing pesticide spray drift. Under the Drift Reduction Technology (DRT) Program, agricultural equipment manufacturers would conduct (or make arrangements for a testing facility to conduct) studies to determine the percent drift reduction according to a verification protocol. Once completed, the manufacturer would submit the study to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for review and evaluation. As verified, these reductions could then be quantitatively credited in the environmental risk assessments used to develop the drift reduction measures appearing on the label of the pesticide product. EPA will then review the manufacturers’ studies and, based on these data, it will assign spraying devices a rating on a four-star scale:

* Four stars: Device can reduce spray drift by 90 percent or more.

* Three stars: Device can reduce spray drift by between 75 percent to 89 percent.

* Two stars: Device can reduce spray drift by between 50 percent to 74 percent.

* One star: Device can reduce spray drift by between 25 percent to 49 percent.

* No stars: Device can reduce spray drift by less than 25 percent.

EPA allows pesticide manufacturers to include labeling on their products that contain dual-use instructions, one for farmers using devices that have received stars through the DRT program and another for those using devices that do not have a DRT rating.